What if birth, long shrouded and parodied by popular culture, was made visible?” -Carmen Winant

In 2021 I gave birth to my son alone in an operating room full of caped doctors, metal equipment, and fluorescent lights. I was immobile on a table on my back, arms out, unable to see what was happening to me, the birth of my son. From another room down the hall my husband watched my unplanned, emergency C-section from his phone screen.

The name of this body of work is Failure to Progress, and it comes directly from my hospital birth report. “Failure to progress” is a medical term that means labour has taken too long.

Two and a half years after my son was born I welcomed a baby girl, via VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). The birth experience was extraordinary. I have never felt so powerful. This second birth experience, totally opposite to my first, has given me a unique view into the culture of birth in our medicalized world. The images included here are a mix of found family photographs, self portraits, and iPhone screenshots, chronicling a difficult, painful, joyous, and redemptive four years of matrescence.